col003: CRAMMING THE TOOTHPASTE BACK IN THE TUBE (or, an update feat. COLD MEAT, MURO & VASTA RUÍNA)
+++a column for the international DIY underground__
+++if yr in SYD and you receive this in time, you should come hang for a couple shows in the next couple days feat best band COLD MEAT! more about them below, but for now » Thu 13 Nov at Petersham Bowling Club w/ SPITE + VASTA RUÍNA | Fri 14 Nov at Marrickville Bowling Club w/ PHOTOGENIC + EX-COLLEAGUE + PEEWEE50s (PRESALE TIX HERE)___
A certain American president named Jimmy Carter had other plans. He gave the record companies a giant 10-to-1 tax break, but only if they signed “NO PUNK ROCK.” In other words, it became really profitable to lose money. […] If a label “lost” a couple of million on, say, Meatloaf, they could write off ten times the investment! HAHAHAHAhahahah. There’s your free speech buddy […] The labels began grinding out these incredibly expensive records and not signing anything new. That’s why we ended up making our own records DIY style. Duh. — Geza X (in Fucked Up: The Reader, Gingko Press 2016)
I haven’t fact-checked this, cos when I read and underlined this Geza X quote a year or so ago, I got those hubba-hubba eyes that only come when someone adds a cherry/factoid to your long-running belief system via rambling retrospective anecdote and I’ve chosen to believe it ever since. There are many theories on how the DIY ethic got crammed into the punk genre after its advent as a music industry construct, but the notion of that being a response to government suppression is at least interesting to consider in these end times. Regardless of how intentionally conspiratorial the suppression of music of the punk and punk adjacent has been historically, the point here is (yet again) Geza’s solution: you just make your own records when the gates get shut in your face. And off the page? Feels better to play in the badlands sandpit then reaching your arm through said gates in hope for a handshake.
One thing about reading back through zine archives, old interviews, and reflections like Geza X’s above, is that I start to feel cringingly grateful for the inheritance we received from the initial waves of the punk movement and its offshoots. Not just for the recorded output, but these kinds of hard-won battles that we benefit from now in the most basic of things (like: ‘we can call up a pressing plant and press our own record at reasonable prices’) to the most complex (like: ‘we have an international network of DIY communities that enables a niche hardcore band from Colombia to tour the world without corporate involvement’). It makes me think about lineages, and all the threads of history I feel some kind of affinity to, no matter how frayed they’ve been feeling of late (“depression’s got a hold of me”, etc). As in, if you wanna make two sides of a coin out of the colluding force between the US president, Meatloaf and the major record labels VS a half century worth of DIY networks built in opposition to that… am I calling heads or tails? If I think of all the small decisions I make as something that gets bundled up as an inheritance to give to the next wave, is the bundl gonna make the next round of this stuff feel better or worse (“it’s gonna kill me”, etc).
Much written and stripped out for something more longform I’ll get to print eventually (a zine/book that I hope is received as a good faith argument to circle the wagons: there are seven graphs, it makes me look like the unabomber), so instead this update is a sloppy ode to three timely and topical punk bands who have given, maintained and restored my faith in this corner of music that I choose to go insane in, all of whom just have or just will be playing Sydney. More forced optimism to be sure, but in COLD MEAT, MURO and VASTA RUÍNA, I reckon there really is light in the tunnel, oncoming train or no.
COLD MEAT: Cake & Arse Party 7” (2025) + Complete Meat CS (2025) + Sydney Tour Dates (Nov 13 & 14, 2025)
There’s no mythology to how I first discovered Boorloo/Perth’s COLD MEAT; I bought the Jimmy’s Lipstick 7” at the record store when it came out in 2016. That was a time in the pre-streaming paradigm when it still seemed feasible to take a punt on a record and see if it stuck, and what a punt that ended up being. COLD MEAT have since become one of my favourite bands, not just of the contemporary, but of everything in my shelves. I’ve worn two of their shirts into the ground, their Pork Sword Fever 7” has become almost unplayable with how many times I played it in a drunken flurry, and the Hot & Flustered LP has taken pride of place as a go-to ‘readying to get to the show’ primer. Pretty hard to make a case against COLD MEAT for consistency and quality, and when I heard that they had a new 7” coming earlier this year (the great Cake & Arse Party), I felt a real rush to the head. It’s been a long time since I’d anticipated a 7”, and even longer since I anticipated one that ended up great. A 7” that makes a good case for brevity over levity, and a real blast as always to experience the vocal and lyrical chops of Ashley Ack (her delivery of “I cannot remember how it feels to be myself” has been running around in my head like mantra).
I was lucky enough to support them with BB & THE BLIPS on their last tour in 2019 (and by “lucky”, I mean I booked the show and threw us on the bill, which hmm…considering EX-COLLEAGUE are supporting them on Friday, maybe it’s true that you make your own luck) and have very good memories of driving to the beach with the band, playing the show in this bizarre too-slick space in Kings Cross that I came across, and thinking while watching their set that it’s not just that I like this band, it’s that I wish every band was just like them — I would have zero issues with a mandated COLD MEAT in every city policy; submit an EOI for your city today!
You won’t find a COLD MEAT review that doesn’t in some way triangulate their sound between Ohio proto-punk (ELECTRIC EELS, from whom the band take their name), the UK 2010’s contemporary (GOOD THROB) and Australian murder punk (THE VICTIMS), but after ten years of plugging away I really do think that COLD MEAT should be something of a reference point of their own, at least in this country (“sounds like COLD MEAT”). I think that the kind of continuity that allows for successive referencing through the generations has been lost somewhat in recent years (thank you new internet and the next-big-thing putsch), so I was stoked when the band were down to let me put out a Complete Meat compilation cassette featuring everything the band have recorded (get it from the BH shop, the band, or at the showssss.) A chance, if you haven’t heard them already, to slow down and listen through ten years of contemporary Perth punk history and give the discography the appreciation it deserves! (Quick anecdote: when I asked Kyle — see also the great HELTA SKELTA RECORDS — if they had any other unreleased tracks to throw on the tape, he found a live recording of a “bad song” that, if I’d written it, would be the best thing I’d ever done.)
Also, not to sound like a snake oil salesman, but come to these shows to cure what ails you: Thu 13th Nov at Petersham Bowling Club, Fri 14th Nov at Marrickville Bowling Club, more details on the poster below. Not only will you get to see the great COLD MEAT, but you’ll get to see who I think are the two best new hardcore bands in town on Thursday in SPITE and VASTA RUÍNA, and on the Friday: Sydney’s most underrated band of the 2020’s in PHOTOGENIC, the joys of Newcastle’s PEEWEE50s, and EX-COLLEAGUE (feat members of DISPLAY HOMES, ROMANCE and DORA MAAR). Presale tickets here if you need ‘em for peace of mind, but tix are also available on the door at no extra charge because…well, why the fuck have we allowed the pay less for presale paradigm to enter our subcultural logic???????)
MURO - Live in Sydney (2025)
I write this the morning after the Sydney leg of MURO’s Australian tour, one of the great contemporary DIY hardcore acts who, for years now, have had an aura about them that’s somewhere between a good reputation and a rumour. One of those rare kind of groups who have always seemed to have been there: such is their power! The question is how and why their reputation precedes them like this when they’ve been militantly against promoting themselves by technocratic means (they’ve never had an online streaming presence nor social media account as far as I can tell, and only their earliest demos and compilation appearances have appeared online officially via Bogota-based label Fuerza Ingobernable Discos.) All their infamy appears to be entirely driven by word-of-mouth; stunning to behold in these times.
Beyond saying that MURO sounds to me like they’ve hit the exact middle-point between WRETCHED and GISM, I’m not gonna try to describe their music; I’m very bad at describing music (UPDATE: when I saw that DX wrote something on MURO over at the Distort substack I was hoping he’d fill these blanks; but in his great piece, he too skirted the sonics — my working theory is that the band’s bigger picture tends to swamp the aesthetic minutiae). Maybe the hardcore ethnomusicologists can illuminate this at some point, but I found something interesting in the triangulation between Italian/Japanese hardcore with the contemporary Latin American/Colombian spin that is (maybe) indebted to the post-nineties tour routes opened up by US hardcore bands like LOS CRUDOS here. I’m too frazzled to rise to the occasion of backing that up right now, but with the give-me-a-wedgie admission that this will be the most hand wavy thing I’ll ever write: the MURO LP and last week’s live show feels to me like a hardcore prophecy fulfilled.
I feel like I very rarely talk to a band who wholly believes in what they’re doing lately (heard you liked some…anecdotal evidence). Maybe that uncertainty comes with the paranoid streak of living under the eyes of the pervasive internet, a healthy dose of humility or an unhealthy dose of cynicism, but there’s almost always an undercurrent of wanting something different from: the sound they’ve achieved, the type of shows, the venues, the role of the internet, the requirement of Instagram account and/or presale ticket link, dynamics of their respective scenes, loss of an ethical framework, the concessions and compromises that get made to “market realities”, awkwardness surrounding the corporate handshake. The common feeling of “I’m doing this thing but wish I wasn’t” takes the wind out of the sails a bit I reckon…which cuts to the core of what made MURO’s shows feel so damn good for everyone who was there (and I mean everyone, no matter which corner of which micro-scene). To see MURO is to see a band who believe in their project, believe in what it’s achieving, and believe in the way they’re doing it: something worth aspiring to, as hard as it is to achieve of late.
I’m gonna keep driving that point home because I feel we all need to hear it: MURO are good not just because each member is incredible at what they do, but because of the way they’re doing it, and the reasons they do it. The Nueva Dogma LP (which includes an insert featuring a boycott list of brands that most of us would be contractually obliged to put at the bottom of our show posters) had copies walking out the door at both of their shows despite it being a year since it came out. This is in a time when most corporate booking agencies won’t tour a band unless they do it on the back of a new release. It’s not just that MURO get it right on record and on stage, but that they’ve taken care with all the surrounding factors that are increasingly treated as extraneous. They’re not known internationally as one of the contemporary hardcore bands because they’ve been shrewd with their marketing and have the right connections; they’ve found a way of spreading the word through their actions alone, and through a commitment to the DIY ethic embedded within the medium they’ve chosen to utilise.
I’m all hopped up on coffee cos my partner’s overseas for work and I’m still making and drinking the whole pot, so chalk the hyperbolic claims up to that if you must: but I can’t think of the last touring group I’ve seen who’s had more of an impact here than MURO has already. Their shows changed the shape even of the beer garden conversations I was having, to the point of sparking a chat about starting a DIY space as a way of correcting the course of recent years. I can’t be the only one who walked away from last week thinking that MURO are something of a set example for the back half of the 2020’s either. A motivating force to throw off the shackles of the COVID-era compromise and cram the toothpaste back in the tube!
VASTA RUÍNA - GUERRA AO POBRE CS (2025)
I wanted to write more about this great new Sydney band, but it’s Wednesday, I’m late for work, and I wanna pump this out before the COLD MEAT shows, the Thursday show of which VASTA RUÍNA are playing. So I’ll treat this as if it’s the end of the first episode of a Star Trek: Next Generation two-parter, a cliffhanger of: “woah, who’s VASTA RUÍNA and what have they done to Worf!” (find out at the Petersham Bowling Club). I haven’t caught them live yet, but been streaming their new tape a LOT lately and it’s one of the first things that have come out of Sydney in a long time that I feel very, very good about. The members of the band are also some of the few people in this city I can talk to openly about the trials and tribulations of contemporary punk without being looked at like I’ve run over someone’s dog, so that helps too of course. The tape was released on R.I.P. Peace which has become my favourite label in the country, and speaking of destroying the technocracy: you must email RIPPEACERECORDS@GMAIL.COM to source copies. We love it!
+++other updates___
__ coming down to (Ray+Dave Davies voice) Victooooria to see TOODY COLE play next week, so let me know if you’re after any BH goods and wanna avoid postage via a hand delivery, hopefully get a chance to cross paths with friends new and old while paying tribute to rock n roll royalty, including…you?
__the Barely Human book collecting ten years of writing on underground music matters is juuust about to sell out of its third edition. Been so stoked on how this self-publishing project has gone (400 pity sales can’t be wrong), and highly recommend taking a punt on DIY’ing your own projects if you’ve ever considered the idea. i’ve put the book on sale at the BH online shop for $19.69 until stocks are exhausted to help raise funds to publish round four, which is a steal even in this economy, no?
__on the note of writing, i just handed in new edits for a third novel that will be called Now, Autonomy and published through Giramondo hopefully in May 2026 (i’m free of deadline and am human again if you’ve been waiting on an email, parcel or apology). if you’re interested in these novels, the forthcoming one is the third in a trilogy of punk adjacent explorations of subculture, class and history-in-the-making, so you can catch up on the first two if you want to, packaged for AUD$50 direct from the publisher here or distroed direct from me here. these are unfortunately only available in Australia at the moment, but I’m hoping to stick the landing on an international publisher/distributor for the next one if you’ve got any leads!